Category Archives: design

To avoid end of semester work I decided to throw a Christmas party. This was the first year I had a whole apartment to decorate so take a look:

For decorations I made paper chains out of a holiday JCrew magazine and added newspaper snowflakes using soda can tabs as hooks.

For added festivity I went out into a mysterious wooded area behind my building and cut greens and bittersweet. As for food my roommate and I made reindeer cookies, and peanut butter cup peanut butter cookies. I also made guacamole because everything is way better with guacamole. It’s not in the photo below, because it’s shy and also I forgot to take it out of the fridge.

For invitations I again took inspiration from Kerry at the Tragic Whale with her homemade present tags. I had made a holly stamp last year, but of course threw it out once I was done. The new version of the stamp was made with an eraser and a kitchen knife… and amazingly I still have 10 fingers!

I obviously have no pictures of the actually party since that would be logical, but here is one from before the party of our two fireplaces! Few places have a need for that much fake warmth.

If you wish you had a TV that doubles as a fireplace check out the movie on netflix “Fireplace for your Home” There are two episodes.. I like the first one best, but you can spend hours watching it by yourself to decide.

And no party would be complete without a snow globe of me in the bathroom.

I recently rearranged my room for summer, which means bed by the windows or else I’ll die of heat stroke. Because of the switcheroo this has become the super cool corner of the room (take that dresser section).

The letters spelling ‘hate’ is my personal favorite. My mom made the letters from metal, wood, and sticks for an art installation a few years ago. She had them spelling out a Wordsworth quote, but was kind enough to give them to my acrostic ‘hate’ wall. Every time I see it I can’t help smiling at the ridiculousness.

I got that chair last summer at a yard sale. Fun thing that chair taught me: you don’t need to be in a car for your butt to stick to leather. The cool barrel lamp thing was made by grandfather. He was a welder and made it out of a barrel and cast iron cobbler shoe molds, which is the coolest part and I am covering in this photo for no good reason except that I didn’t know where to put that handkerchief when I was cleaning my room.

On the lamp/barrel is a wooden ball and cup game, which my grandmother gave me a few Christmases ago saying, “I entered the toy store and it just happened.” Sixteenth century Mexico knew what was up, this game is perfect.

I recently ordered two things from my friend Kerry’s etsy shop. One of them is a present for a friend who might check this blog before I can give it to her, so I can’t show it on here… yet. But the other is for me, so I can show it off all I want. Here it is:

Isn’t it adorable! It got here super fast and is the perfect size for all my clutching needs. Thanks Kerry! (Her blog, The Tragic Whale, is hilarious)

So I am in a Typography class (evidenced by these drawings of letters) and I am currently working on the final project which is an accordion book with type specimens and a timeline of type. Today we bound our first draft. Here mine is so far:

oohhh, what nice linoleum tiles!

And here is the timeline side:

Clearly it isn’t very full at the moment, since I didn’t have the content ready to put in for the first draft. This has been super fun to make, but last class when I worked on it for four hours straight my brian nearly exploded.

So I have been in a typography class for a full month and only now am I not ashamed by my letter drawing. So I am sharing it. Before you judge keep in mind these are drawn completely free hand. We can’t even use rulers when drawing the background boxes.